21-11-2012, 04:48 PM
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
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What is research?
Research in common parlance refers to a search for knowledge. Once can also define research as a scientific and systematic search for pertinent information on a specific topic. Research is an art of scientific investigation. Research refers to the process of collecting, documenting and analyzing important, critical and relevant information pertaining to any problem or question. This means that presence of a query or question implies research to be undertaken. ‘ a careful investigation or inquiry specially through search for new facts in any branch of knowledge.
According to Clifford woody
“Research comprises defining and redefining problems, formulating hypothesis or suggested solution; collecting, organizing and evaluating data; making deduction and reaching conclusion; and at last carefully testing the conclusions to determine whether they fit the formulating hypothesis.
Marketing research is the function which links the consumer, customer and public to the marketer through information-information used to identify and defined marketing opportunities and problem; generate, refine and evaluate marketing action; monitor marketing performance; and improve understanding of market as a process.
Criteria of Good Research
Whatever may be the types of research works and studies, one thing that is important is that they all meet on the common ground of scientific method employed by them. One expects scientific research
1. The purpose of the research should be clearly defined and common concepts be used.
2. The research procedure used should be described in sufficient detail to permit another researcher to repeat the research for further advancement, keeping the continuity of what has already been attained.
3. The procedural design of the research should be carefully planned to yield results that are as objective as possible.
4. The researcher should report with complete frankness, flaws in procedural design and estimate their effects upon the findings.
5. The analysis of data should be sufficiently adequate to reveal its significance and the methods of analysis used should be appropriate. The validity and reliability of the data should be checked carefully.
6. Conclusions should be confined to those justified by the data of the research and limited to those for which the data provide an adequate basis.
Formulating the research problem:
There are two types of research problems, viz., those which relate to states of nature and those which relate to relationships between variables. At the very outset the researcher must single out the problem he wants to study, i.e., he must decide the general area of interest or aspect of a subject-matter that he would like to inquire into.
Essentially two steps are involved in formulating the research problem, viz., understanding the problem thoroughly, and rephrasing the same into meaningful terms from an analytical point of view.
The Research problem is “Market potential & sales distribution channel of MYK Laticrete India Pvt ltd”
Since pune region is a vast region, company is more focused in targeting ground level customer ie. Through retail network in the market there is huge gap between demand and supply so we need to study what is the potential in the retail market and how company distribute their product to this retailer.
Extensive literature survey:
Once the problem is formulated, a brief summary of it should be written down. At this juncture the researcher should undertake extensive literature survey connected with the problem. For this purpose, the abstracting and indexing journals and published or unpublished bibliographies are the first place to go to. Academic journals, conference proceedings, government reports, books etc
In this research I have used past research project done by company, Market potential and sales distribution from Philip Kotler for understanding the concept of the study.
Preparing the research design:
The research problem having been formulated in clear cut terms, the researcher will be required to prepare a research design, i.e., he will have to state the conceptual structure within which research would be conducted.
The preparation of such a design facilitates research to be as efficient as possible yielding maximal information. In other words, the function of research design is to provide for the collection of relevant evidence with minimal expenditure of effort, time and money. But how all these can be achieved depends mainly on the research purpose. Research purposes may be grouped into four categories, viz.